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Thank you for posting a detailed comment. > The data is clear - single payer systems achieve lower prices thanks to having MONOPSONY POWER over the market The

by javert 7y ago

Thank you for posting a detailed comment. > The data is clear - single payer systems achieve lower prices thanks to having MONOPSONY POWER over the market The data is clear that a free market for healthcare would do even better than a single payer system. I seriously believe that. But this is the problem with "the data is clear"-based arguments. I won't convince you by saying that "the data is clear" because it's much more complicated, and that's why you also won't convince me by saying that. Now I get that in a narrow sense your data is clearer than mine: we have the U.S. system and we have single-payer systems, and we can see that the latter are better. But we don't have a comparison point for a free market in healthcare. Although I think there is enough data to conclude that it would be far superior, by the criterion you are using---simply comparing the systems we have in the world today directly to one another---there is a gap missing; we don't have data on a free market in health care. So technically, you don't know that single payer is better than a free market in healthcare. If you have a free market for MOOCs, coding schools, etc., people will exercise their economic judgement such that good schools win and bad schools die out. If you have the government pay for it, it will be an inherently vicious process that will reward the schools that are best able to solicit funding and it will end up in the same place the 4-year colleges did. Greece probably didn't do better on the Drachma, it probably just hadn't had the pendulum swing back the other way again (i.e. come down from the sugar high). I mean, that's my guess, based on my economic views. This goes back to the "the data is clear" issue... causation is really complicated to understand. I'm sorry but I don't believe in local currencies. If there is an honest and sound money, people will always prefer it. I think that is what we should work towards. But props to you for making something. I think people should be free to choose any currency they like, including a local currency.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
EGreg 7y ago
In a free market both sides compete. In a single payer system only providers compete. Basic macroeconomic models predict that prices would be lower, and in fact the data shows this. Now you can say that a free market doesn’t exist, but then what is the use of your theories? You don’t adjust them by encountering any data. If I am wrong, tell me what data you have ever encountered to make you change your theories about the free market and government? BTW I believe free markets do exist, and have always existed - at the highest levels of human organization. Today this is international markets. There is no monopoly of force. And I would like to see data that these markets are more efficient and less susceptible to, say, cornering (eg the Bank of England by George Soros, or international prices of bread/metals/etc. by Goldman Sachs) than managed markets like the US Public Stock Markets. “If there is an honest and sound money, people will always prefer it”. Actually Gresham’s law says the opposite. If the exchange rate is set by law them BAD MONEY will drive out the good. That’s because money is a means of exchange, more than it is a store of value. The means of exchange is always the thing you want to get rid of and others will take. The store of value is what you want to hoard. Even Aristophanes realized this thousands of years ago: https://mises.org/library/aristophanes-inflation https://mises.org/library/aristophanes-inflation
- javert 7y ago
  I'm saying a free market doesn't exist in healthcare. It exists in lots of other areas. We can see that free markets always perform better, and non-free markets are always dysfunctional directly in proportion to the degree of government intervention. There is an overwhelming amount of "data" supporting this. The data is all around us and goes back through history clearly to the Industrial Revolution. But the data also goes even further back; it explains why the Industrial Revolution happened only in certain places and why certain countries are are extremely far ahead of others. But understanding all this requires looking carefully at causation. It's not something you can capture in a study. That's why I put "data" in quotes the first time. > I believe free markets do exist, and have always existed - at the highest levels of human organization. A free market exists when force is barred. The U.S. came close to a free market at the time of its founding and has become progressively more unfree since. Western European countries (particularly England and France, sometimes Germany) have a similar but less pronounced trajectory over the same span of time. International politics is not a free market; it's a collection of armed "gangs" (effectively) that all can use force against one another. Tariffs are also a serious use of force and violation of a free market. A free market literally just means "no force is allowed." If you don't like the term "free market" being used that way, just replace every instance in my comment with "no force is allowed." I'm not interested in arguing about the names of concepts and principles; only about concepts and principles. Gresham's Law is designed to account for a legal tender situation where there are forms of money with the same nominal value under the law but different real value. I will quote a section from Wikipedia which I agree with: "Those examples show that in the absence of effective legal tender laws, Gresham's Law works in reverse. If given the choice of what money to accept, people will transact with money they believe to be of highest long-term value. However, if not given the choice and required to accept all money, good and bad, they will tend to keep the money of greater perceived value in their possession and to pass on the bad money to someone else." [1] I mean, we don't need to trust Wikipedia to see this. People prefer to use the most liquid token of exchange for all transactions, though it also needs to be durable, fungible, etc. The most liquid "token" (and it could even be a commodity) then becomes the best store of value because it is used in transactions. There will never be a place where one money doesn't drive out the other (good drives out the less-good) because one will be more liquid than the other. The whole point of money is just to be something you can trade for anything because everyone will trade it for anything. It solves the "coincidence of wants" problem in a barter economy---the fact that if you are a fisherman and I am an apple grower, I can't buy fish unless you want apples and vice versa. Pardon me for being pedantic; at this point I've gotten into territory that you've very likely encountered before. People would prefer a sound and honest money if there were one. Bitcoin was designed to meet these criteria if it were to become liquid enough; maybe some day it will be, or maybe not. Gold was a sound and honest money, but world governments got us to slowly get off gold, one step at a time. So now it doesn't have enough liquidity and is anyway on shaky ground legally. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law

by javert 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

EGreg 7y ago

In a free market both sides compete. In a single payer system only providers compete. Basic macroeconomic models predict that prices would be lower, and in fact the data shows this. Now you can say that a free market doesn’t exist, but then what is the use of your theories? You don’t adjust them by encountering any data. If I am wrong, tell me what data you have ever encountered to make you change your theories about the free market and government? BTW I believe free markets do exist, and have always existed - at the highest levels of human organization. Today this is international markets. There is no monopoly of force. And I would like to see data that these markets are more efficient and less susceptible to, say, cornering (eg the Bank of England by George Soros, or international prices of bread/metals/etc. by Goldman Sachs) than managed markets like the US Public Stock Markets. “If there is an honest and sound money, people will always prefer it”. Actually Gresham’s law says the opposite. If the exchange rate is set by law them BAD MONEY will drive out the good. That’s because money is a means of exchange, more than it is a store of value. The means of exchange is always the thing you want to get rid of and others will take. The store of value is what you want to hoard. Even Aristophanes realized this thousands of years ago: https://mises.org/library/aristophanes-inflation https://mises.org/library/aristophanes-inflation

javert 7y ago
I'm saying a free market doesn't exist in healthcare. It exists in lots of other areas. We can see that free markets always perform better, and non-free markets are always dysfunctional directly in proportion to the degree of government intervention. There is an overwhelming amount of "data" supporting this. The data is all around us and goes back through history clearly to the Industrial Revolution. But the data also goes even further back; it explains why the Industrial Revolution happened only in certain places and why certain countries are are extremely far ahead of others. But understanding all this requires looking carefully at causation. It's not something you can capture in a study. That's why I put "data" in quotes the first time. > I believe free markets do exist, and have always existed - at the highest levels of human organization. A free market exists when force is barred. The U.S. came close to a free market at the time of its founding and has become progressively more unfree since. Western European countries (particularly England and France, sometimes Germany) have a similar but less pronounced trajectory over the same span of time. International politics is not a free market; it's a collection of armed "gangs" (effectively) that all can use force against one another. Tariffs are also a serious use of force and violation of a free market. A free market literally just means "no force is allowed." If you don't like the term "free market" being used that way, just replace every instance in my comment with "no force is allowed." I'm not interested in arguing about the names of concepts and principles; only about concepts and principles. Gresham's Law is designed to account for a legal tender situation where there are forms of money with the same nominal value under the law but different real value. I will quote a section from Wikipedia which I agree with: "Those examples show that in the absence of effective legal tender laws, Gresham's Law works in reverse. If given the choice of what money to accept, people will transact with money they believe to be of highest long-term value. However, if not given the choice and required to accept all money, good and bad, they will tend to keep the money of greater perceived value in their possession and to pass on the bad money to someone else." [1] I mean, we don't need to trust Wikipedia to see this. People prefer to use the most liquid token of exchange for all transactions, though it also needs to be durable, fungible, etc. The most liquid "token" (and it could even be a commodity) then becomes the best store of value because it is used in transactions. There will never be a place where one money doesn't drive out the other (good drives out the less-good) because one will be more liquid than the other. The whole point of money is just to be something you can trade for anything because everyone will trade it for anything. It solves the "coincidence of wants" problem in a barter economy---the fact that if you are a fisherman and I am an apple grower, I can't buy fish unless you want apples and vice versa. Pardon me for being pedantic; at this point I've gotten into territory that you've very likely encountered before. People would prefer a sound and honest money if there were one. Bitcoin was designed to meet these criteria if it were to become liquid enough; maybe some day it will be, or maybe not. Gold was a sound and honest money, but world governments got us to slowly get off gold, one step at a time. So now it doesn't have enough liquidity and is anyway on shaky ground legally. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law